


The Boy who Gave him a Star

by CloverTheGrand



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Childhood Memories, Dreamscapes, Family Member Death, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Lucid Dreaming, Mentions of terminal illness, Recovered Memories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28824207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloverTheGrand/pseuds/CloverTheGrand
Summary: When he was a boy, Gabriel drowned in the sea. He was saved by a boy who descended down the Heavens, whose hair flowed down his shoulders like a curtain of fire, who seemed too familiar to be a stranger. The boy had gifted him a star that would give him good fortune wherever he went.Ever since he was a child, Gabriel had possessed a gem which he had called a star. Gabriel figured that the namesake came from glowing star-shaped pattern within the smooth, purple stone. It was a common star sapphire, one where many gift shops and websites sold it as part of an assortment of gemstones for as little as $5. It was a shame he did not remember who had gifted the stone to him.In any other circumstance, perhaps Gabriel's story could've ended here. Perhaps he could've settled down and lived as a decent lawyer with a surprising amount of luck on his side. Perhaps after throwing the star out during Spring cleaning, Gabriel's time would be up and his life would end in a freak accident as suddenly as a snapped violin string. Perhaps.Only, the boy had given him the wrong star.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Gabriel (Good Omens), Crowley & Gabriel (Good Omens), Crowley/Gabriel (Good Omens)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is... probably the most experimental work I've written so far. I've originally planned this to be a very long oneshot, but I figured that there was too much I wanted to sort out and so splitted this into a multichaptered fic. I'm planning for this fic to be like a lucid dream, so this is gonna be a really emotionally-driven story. 
> 
> Enjoy!!

When he was a boy, Gabriel drowned in the sea.

Gabriel could not remember how he ended up in the middle of the sea. What he did remember too vividly were the sensations. How the cold waves swallowed him whole. How a pair of icy claws pulled him downwards like some cruel prank. How he struggled to reach the surface and screamed for help. 

Gabriel had tried to cry but his head was underwater.

He kicked. He screamed. Yet Gabriel sank below the surface. And then his eyes closed, and all was dark. 

And then there was light. 

A warm hand grasped around his own one, flooding it with the warmth the waters had robbed. Effortlessly Gabriel was hoisted to the water and into the arms of the stranger, and he shivered as the cold salty air froze him to the bone. Yet, a warm glow radiated the stranger, so much that the cold was slowly ebbing out of Gabriel. 

Gabriel looked up at him, then found himself met with gentle eyes of molten gold. It was a boy with scarlet red hair that tumbled down his shoulders like a curtain of fire, and wore robes of pure light. The boy glowed like he had descended from the myriad of stars glittering in the sky. A pang of familiarity struck Gabriel, even though he was certain he had never seen the boy before. He hiccuped, grateful yet terrified of someone so close having dragged him out of the icy abyss.

There was an indescribable gentleness inside of the boy’s eyes, then he closed them and touched Gabriel’s forehead with his own. Grateful tears tumbled down Gabriel’s face as the boy stroked his back, calming him down. Then he hoisted Gabriel into his arms and walked across the vast, black ocean waves as if it was simply ground, treating the many waves as mere stepping stones beneath his feet. 

At last, they had arrived onto dry land and the boy laid him down onto pebbled ground. The boy looked back at him, a sorrowful, regretful expression on his face, and then he turned around and walked across onto the water. 

And then the cold began to grip Gabriel again. The cold winds howled. He extended a hand and tried to reach for the boy. “No… please… please don’t leave me alone.”

But the boy seemed to take no notice and continued to walk away. The breath from Gabriel was starting to leave him, and his breathing became shaky as his vision darkened. Gabriel kept on calling out for him even as his strength sapped away, until at last, he had no more strength to call for him anymore. 

His vision turned dark as he gazed up at the endless sky, then breathed out. But the boy had returned, and Gabriel found himself wrapped around in light again. 

The boy frowned at him, worried, grasping Gabriel’s hand into his chest. Gabriel saw that his own hands were tinged with blue.

His panicked expression was making Gabriel panic, and tears welled up in his eyes again. The boy took notice of this and looked around. The boy looked up to the sky. Then the boy gave a small smile. "Hey," he started. "Let me show you a magic trick to cheer you up."

The boy touched the velvet night with his slender fingers, then plucked out one of the many stars. The star shined bright in his hand, a vivid, hot breeze radiating from its blazing core. Though Gabriel braced himself, the boy did not faze at the heat. Then the boy crouched down and picked up a smooth, round pebble from the ground. 

Gabriel watched, transfixed, as the boy placed the star into the pebble. The star gleamed within the pebble's confounds one last time, then its light dimmed. A white, iridescent star was imprinted on its luminous, purple surface that glowed despite the dark.

The boy placed the star into Gabriel’s hand, then closed his fingers around it. Gabriel swore that there was a warm life to it, like holding a small fluttering bird. A rosy colour flushed back into his fingers as warmth ebbed into him.

"As long as you hold this star in your hands, you will be safe, and good fortune will come your way,” said the boy. “As long as this is with you, it will keep you alive. Do you promise not to lose it?”

Gabriel grasped around the star with both hands, tucking it into his chest, and then nodded vigorously. 

“Promise? For the rest of your life? Please, promise me.”

“I promise,” Gabriel said. 

The boy smiled sadly, then looked up at the sky. "I have to go now. Goodbye."

With one last glance back, the boy turned away and glided across the water once again. Gabriel looked at the boy quizzically, trying to see where he went. But the more Gabriel looked at him, the drowsier he became, until at last, he fell asleep. Only now, there was none of the thieving darkness, but a soft slumber. 

Gabriel clung into the warm star that flooded his body with warmth, feeling the cold ebb away, drip by drip.

* * *

Gabriel's parents found him washed up onto a gravelled island.

They scolded him. They cried. They all cried.

Gabriel's mother kissed him on the head and soothed him as he was transported to the paramedic helicopter's stretcher.

When Gabriel came to again and opened his hand, he saw the star in his palm, a pretty purple thing trapped in a pebble. 

* * *

Ever since he was a child, Gabriel had possessed a gem which he had called a star. 

Gabriel figured that the namesake came from glowing star-shaped pattern within the smooth, purple stone. It stayed inside in the tomb of his bedside drawer, ready to be looked around whenever Gabriel wanted to fiddle and look at it just before he went to sleep. Holding the stone was somehow very comforting. Even in the dead of Winter, the gem had always felt so warm and comforting to be held. Perhaps it was the many flecks of refracting light doing its magic, perhaps it was the perfectly smooth and curved surface, but Gabriel always found that he could not look away or put it down whenever he held it. 

Gabriel did not know where it came from, only that it was given to him by a childhood friend. Who was the friend? Where, when, and why was he given this gift? Gabriel had forgotten. Such a shame, because with all those fond memories, surely they were good friends once. All that Gabriel remembered was that the first memory he had with this gem was inside a lucid dream. Considering how vivid that dream was, Gabriel figured out that the true story behind the star was that the exchange was so ordinary that he remembered what happened inside a dream instead.

When the world wide web came to be, Gabriel searched up what gem it was. He found that it was a star sapphire, and a purple coloured one, too. There were thousands of identical pictures of the stone, down to the iridescent way the gemstone shone around the star centre. Many gift shops and websites sold it as part of an assortment of gemstones for as little as $5. 

Gabriel fiddled with the star sapphire between his fingers, which had warmed up more from being inside his hand for so long. Pity that he forgot who and why that friend had given it to him, but now he knew that the gem was a lot more common than what the friend had bragged it to be.

After he turned off the computer, Gabriel put the star sapphire back into the bottom of his bedside drawer where it stayed. 

* * *

_It was dark._

_An aching loneliness curdled inside him, so black the darkness hummed. He was missing someone dear, he did not know it, but he was missing someone dear. And so Gabriel curled up into a ball, huddling onto the ground as black sand blew all around him._

_And then a pair of golden reptilian eyes scissored through the dark._

_Gabriel’s breath hitched as the figure slowly moved towards him. A pair of shadowy hands reached out for him, slipping underneath his hands. Though they stroked his hands in an attempt to comfort him, they couldn’t, as they were as cold as ice._

_Gabriel woke up._

* * *

_It was light._

_Gabriel was bathed by warm, soothing sunlight, as if he was cradled within clouds that glowed a saccharine sunset orange. And it felt like he was loved._

_Above him, a gentle pair of sky blue eyes peered at him._

_He peered, trying to distinguish the figure above him. The starry sky was a placid lake, and the figure was floating inside. Only, the eyes were so far away, like they were at the bottom of the muddy lake. Gabriel’s eyes refused to register anything out of his peripheral vision, and Gabriel could not see who it was completely. Gabriel reached a hand above him, trying to meet the owner of the eyes._

_But alas, Gabriel lost consciousness and fell into a deep, comfortable slumber._


	2. Chapter 2

_A blinding light shone from the glass ceiling above, bleaching everything it touched to be too bright. People with a million faces Gabriel rushed past him in their fevered frenzy, like a time lapse of life. Their conversations and the sounds of the train station all hummed into a single string of electric white noise, and Gabriel was so alone, frozen in the centre._

_It was late. It was late and he needed to go home, but how could he go anywhere? He had no tickets. No bags. And nothing here in this station stopped for him anyway._

_However there was one outlier to this place’s rhythm._

_A red haired man in black. A man so foreign from his memory, yet a man Gabriel felt he knew._

_He was turned away with his back against him, but unlike with the other people Gabriel could hear what he was saying._

_“Please,” the man said into a payphone. “I can explain, you just need to give me more time.”_

_Gabriel wove his way through the crowd. However no matter how fast he went the man kept on slipping away farther. And so Gabriel ran faster._

_“He was one of us, I cannot let him go. I know. Should’ve known my place. But-“_

_At last, Gabriel was able to grasp his hand. “Pardon me. I think we knew each other once. Do we?”_

_But the hand he grabbed was not from the red haired man; just another figure from the crowd. Gabriel blinked at the blank skin, embarrassed that he had confused him for someone else. The figure slipped his hand away from Gabriel’s as if it was made of air, then drifted away and melted into the kaleidoscope crowd, leaving Gabriel alone with no answers._

* * *

Gabriel Heavensworth was a recent law graduate who came from an upper class family. He had recently graduated from Yale Law School, was offered an internship at a law firm, and had been engaged with a fiancée for half a year. Gabriel considered that he had a complete head start in life. 

Even as a child from an affluent family, people commended how he always seemed to have a stroke of luck on his side. Whenever Gabriel had forgotten that there was a test or assignment, it was always revealed to have been scheduled on the wrong day. One time Gabriel went to buy a scratch off ticket, and to his surprise amassed a small fortune, just when he needed cash to buy a new computer. 

It was bizarre that good fortune would always get in his way. But Gabriel hardly thought much about it anymore. Eventually life became mundane and stagnant, despite his frequent efforts to improve and spice up his life. Maybe he should be grateful that his life was so stable. Maybe. 

“Babe, do you have spare boxes on your end?” His fiancée called from the other room. 

Gabriel frowned as he pulled open a couple of drawers. “They’re all in the garage.”

His fiancée grumbled. “I can’t reach them. Mind if you at least help me?” 

“I’m still sorting through my stuff. Just give me a sec!”

Gabriel continued to rummage through the drawer, but paused when he came across the purple star sapphire. He lifted it up and inspected the little stone within his broad fingers. When he was a kid he could grasp it with his whole palm.

“Gabriel! They’re stacked on a literal mountain, I’m too short!” 

“Get the ladder!”

“You threw it away after insisting it’s broken!”

He sighed and shook his head, eyes still on the sapphire. Gabriel twirled it around in his hand. Even now, there was still a bizarre warmth radiating from it. 

However his fiancée, by now, was screeching for him to come over. Gabriel needed to finish packing tonight, he couldn’t just hoard everything and sort it later. 

Gabriel dropped the sapphire back, then threw everything in the drawer into the wastepaper basket.

* * *

_A perfect Hunter’s moon hung in the sky, silhouetting miles and miles of forest land. The cool fragrance of pine and mountain air chilled Gabriel’s lungs as he breathed in. Hiking during the nighttime was something he had always wanted to try, and finally he was given this chance._

_Leaves crackled perfectly under his feet as he trekked. He was going downhill, so there was no need to use too much force._

_However Gabriel heard a voice. A quiet crying. And it came from the bottom of this path._

_Gabriel walked down faster and came into a grassy clearing. The orange moon above illuminated a boy in white with hair like tufts of cloud._

  
  
_What was this child doing here all alone? He crouched down and cautiously touched him by the shoulder. “Hey. You alright there, champ?” But Gabriel had to let go when the boy looked up._

_The boy’s eyes were windows into darkness, with a glowing planet circled by an oval ring inside each eye._

_“Oh dear,” the boy said. “Oh dear oh dear. What have you done?”_


End file.
